


she bears that new hope

by ninemoons42



Series: Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childbirth, Gen, Handmaidens, Obi-Wan Kenobi Feels, Padmé Amidala Lives, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6324988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One: Padmé lives.</p><p>Two: she survives the birth of the twins.</p><p>Three: she does not let anyone take the twins away from her.</p><p>Four: she rallies her friends and allies together once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she bears that new hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [johanirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johanirae/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the family amidala](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6027657) by [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic). 



Weights like a pair of once-familiar hands, pressing down, forcing her into silence and the desperate struggle to draw another breath.

Weights like the twin heartbeats snugged beneath her breastbone, radiating their steady wavering warmth into the quiet corners of her, bright sweet intertwined presence.

Weights. The weight of her bruised and battered heart. But she wasn’t dead yet, she wasn’t gone, she was alive -- _alive!_ She needed to be! -- and Padmé Naberrie shivered and spasmed and forced herself to take that one breath. Another. Another. In and out, willing the life back into her own body. Into the swollen joints and the unsteady fingers. She didn’t have a blaster rifle she could steady herself against. That was a pity. She could have used the bolstering.

And she could still smell sulfurous stink and the ozone of clashing light, she could smell flash-boiled blood, _blood on her beloved’s hands_ , and she cried out and struggled to open her eyes. Heavier than dreadnoughts -- 

“Senator, please do attempt to remain calm -- your vital signs -- ” The despairing bleat of a protocol droid. 

“Please, Padmé, you must remain calm -- you need to recover -- a lot of trauma -- ”

“I’ll rest when I’m _dead_ ,” Padmé made herself say: and she grasped at bandaged wrist and bowed shoulder and heaved the unwieldy weight of her body to an upright position. The movement left her winded; it left the children in her belly kicking in fear. She passed one hand over her belly and the other over a familiar head of red hair gone ashen and lank. “General Kenobi,” she rasped. “I would ask you to take me back to Naboo as soon as you can. I’ve a war to fight.”

“I don’t doubt that you do.” She peered into the grief-stricken lines of his face. The harsh brackets framing his bloody mouth. “But -- we have to run. We have to hide. You, me, the droids. We won’t have much time to vanish -- if Anakin survives he will hunt you to the ends of the galaxy and beyond.”

“What happened?” Padmé asked, and she had never claimed any sensitivity to the Force, but who needed it when the man she knew as a robust and dedicated Jedi seemed to be barely holding himself together at the burned seams?

“I -- I wanted to _kill_ him,” and the words drove her to clutch at his shoulder, to offer him support. The words pulled out of him, one by one, poison and fury and pain. “I did my best to kill him. The dark side roared at me, it grasped at my heart, and I nearly heeded it -- I cut his arm and his legs away -- I left him, sliding into the lava -- ”

And worn out as she was she found the strength to pull Obi-Wan Kenobi close. To hold him to her heart and give him what little kindness she could dig out of the ruins of her own soul. “You are not the fallen, General Kenobi. Not you. It was Anakin who fell and you had done so much to prevent it from happening. You did not fail. You went through a terrible temptation and came out of it still walking in the light. Take heart, and let us take up our duties again.”

“You were _half dead_ just moments ago -- ”

“And I still feel like death has reached for me and come so close, closer than it ever has before,” she said, holding him out at arm’s length once more. “But this is a thing that I have become used to. So we’ll do better next time. We’ll be more prepared.”

Harsh squeezing in her chest, in her belly; and a rising sense of agitation in her mind. She shook it off and shook Kenobi’s shoulders, as gently as she could. “If you can’t take me to Naboo then take me somewhere safe.”

Lines in his face again, deepening, but this time with a tattered soldier’s resolve. “Naboo isn’t safe. Nothing of the sort. Not the Core Worlds. Wouldn’t trust planets in the Colonies, either, or the Inner Rim.”

“Then outward we must go,” Padmé murmured. “I might need some assistance getting to the cockpit.”

She grasped his offered hands, and when she was upright and standing she had to lock her knees to stay that way. 

Droids, following in her footsteps, and they had both become familiar to her. Artoo-Detoo rolling slowly alongside her, beeping softly and -- she thought -- supportively.

And shuffling in his wake, a droid she’d seen still in the construction stages, a droid that Anakin Skywalker had built with his own hands. See-Threepio who fussed and puffed and was somehow resolute. 

The droids, and the General, and Padmé herself, the children in her womb -- were they all that had been left of Anakin _before_? 

Pain and fatigue, and the burn in her bruised throat and the insistent lurching of her belly -- she shoved it all away, even the thought that she was barely aware of her own unsteady feet, and she trudged towards the front of Kenobi’s ship and it seemed like such a long way to the co-pilot’s chair. A chair that was hardly worthy of the name: the padding was half worn down to flat and she had to shift uncomfortably against sharp edges on the seat. 

But once she was seated and she could look up into the mottled shifting light of hyperspace she thought that she was familiar with this. She’d done more than her share of sitting in cockpits, learning what she could. How to clean a blaster and how to dress a wound. How to communicate with different species in different sectors. Landing pad clearances and the officious patter of customs inspectors.

She glanced at the comms and suddenly felt so tired, so worn down. There were questions that she needed to ask and that would have nothing but terrible answers. A sudden turn of events, and her scattered friends and allies: and it was up to her to call them together, but first she had to know if any of them were even _alive_ \-- 

Rolling waves of pain, radiating outward from her belly.

And Padmé took a deep, juddering breath as she realized what was going on with her body. With her _children_. They were about to be born and she held her screams back through sheer force of will. Calm, she had to be calm: and she turned to the still-despondent man in the pilot’s seat and said, “My time is upon me, General -- I will need medical assistance -- ”

Pale as he already was, she’d never seen him turn even paler: but he kept his resolve; he nodded and replied just as calmly. “We’ll need to drop out of hyperspace for a moment. I must receive word from Master Yoda and Bail Organa. Should they still be alive, they wait for us.”

Padmé nodded, and wrapped her arms around her spasming body, and gritted her teeth. “I will also need to find an old friend.”

Hyperspace collapsed into a field of unfamiliar stars and the cockpit filled up with insistent beeping, a stream of incoming messages: and she fought to keep her breathing steady and controlled as Kenobi received instructions to hurry to Polis Massa, where the medical facility had been alerted for their immediate arrival.

“Senator Organa. My friend,” Padmé said, as soon as there was a break in the urgent exchange of terse information. “Thank the Force. I had feared for your life.”

“And I for yours,” came the space-scratched reply, staticky and distant and soothing. “We are taking every possible step to ensure your safety in these troubled times.”

“Glad am I to hear that -- and I would ask you to do one more thing for me,” she said.

“If it’s in my power or Breha’s, Padmé, you only have to say so.”

“Sabé,” she said, quietly. “I need her at my side once again. I know she works with you. Please, I beg you to send her to me. But tell her I do not give her any orders -- tell her it’s her _friend_ , asking for her help one more time -- ”

“Say no more,” Bail said. “We have just received confirmation; her ship is even now underway. Mayhap she might even get here before you do -- though, and you’ll forgive me this liberty, you need to get here _now_.”

“We’ll take the shortest hyperspace route,” Obi-Wan said. 

“Then let me detain you no further.”

“General,” and Padmé could not imagine the weight of the galaxy on small green shoulders. “Desperate times these are. Scattered are the Jedi, and their lights slowly fading out of the galaxy. Those who are left we must protect as best as we can.”

“Such as it is, Master Yoda,” was Kenobi’s rasp of a reply.

Padmé felt her belly lurch and her heart clench at the same time and she nearly, nearly cried out -- she held on to her seat and thought desperately of her children, tried to remember the pages of names she’d left behind on a hidden and code-locked data reader on Coruscant -- names, she thought, words that had no meaning now, words that were neutral now, and once again the stars sped into hyperspace and there was a jolt of administered medication on the skin of her arm -- 

And she could take a deep unobstructed breath. She narrowed her eyes in Kenobi’s direction. 

“I have done nothing to endanger your children -- I would never do that,” was the hoarse rejoinder. “Rather it is something to help you keep calm. Deep breaths, is what the healers would recommend for a situation like this: it keeps the oxygen flowing, it means you can make clear-eyed decisions, and it will calm the babies down.”

“I wonder,” Padmé murmured, “how the healers could know so much of easing childbirth when -- when it is so frowned upon by your order. Children are an attachment, are they not?”

“They are, and they always will be.” She watched Kenobi fall back into the pilot’s seat. “May I tell you something that I have learned?”

She nodded as best as she could with the continuing jolting pain in her nerves.

“The Master-Padawan bond,” he said, quiet and sad. “We tell each other to forsake all attachments and yet we must survive on one, just one, for the entire time of our formation. We are to depend on our Masters because they must teach us, and in so doing we become deeply, deeply attached.” A sigh. “We are hypocrites, every last one of us. From Master Yoda to the last-fledged youngling. From the time we are found we are told to train hard and become worthy to be taken on as a Padawan by a Master, and all the while we say we must not be attached to anything or to anyone.”

The word, the name, wrenched out of her. “Anakin.”

“The code of the Jedi condemned his attachment to you -- when it was that attachment that kept him alive.”

“He fell,” Padmé muttered, bitterly, “because he saw a vision of my death. A vision that came to him from -- from the man who is now calling himself the Galactic Emperor.”

“A vision which would not have been able to sway him had he known, had he fully believed, that his comrades were committed to keeping you and him alive and together.” Her heart went out to him as he sighed. “This is difficult to explain.”

“It’s really not.” She gritted her teeth against the contractions -- they were becoming more and more regular now, sharper with each iteration. “If Anakin had been allowed to make friends, if he had been allowed to be a normal being with attachments to friends and family -- then perhaps he would have been protected by those friends and family. Perhaps they would have kept him from falling to the darkness.”

“Yes.”

Alerts, suddenly, springing up all over the cockpit: and Padmé couldn’t breathe relief, not yet, not when her water broke as she heaved herself up from the chair and she half-collapsed against the reassuring bulk of a bleeping Artoo.

“Landing now, forget the bloody clearances, _there are children urgently on the way_ ,” she heard Kenobi yelling, and step by step she forced herself to the doors. 

“Let me out,” she said, weakly, and the scant minute of coupling airlocks passed excruciatingly slowly -- she scratched at the panels with a desperate hand -- 

“M’lady!”

“Impossible,” Padmé breathed, and relief was cold on her nerves and she gratefully fell forward into the arms of a friend. “Dormé.”

“I could hardly refuse when Sabé commed me, ma’am,” Dormé said, and out of the corner of her eye Padmé could see her beckoning urgently to other beings. “Come, come now! Or she will end up giving birth right here where she stands!”

“Steady now, on my count -- one, two, _three_ ,” said another familiar voice. 

Padmé fell back onto the cushioned litter and reached for blaster-scarred hands. “Sabé.”

“I wish I could say it was good to see you again, Padmé,” was the reply. “But -- these are not the best of circumstances.”

Padmé nodded and hissed in pain. “See to the General as well.”

“We’ll leave him to the Senator,” Dormé said. “Right now, _you_ are our priority. You and your child.”

“Children,” Padmé corrected, almost automatically. 

Past doors, down a series of corridors, and she flinched against the coming and going of light from the overhead fixtures, and finally she was in a warm room and she said, “Turn the lights down, please, they’re giving me a headache -- ”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please stay calm, ma’am.”

She let the medical staff cut away her clothes, she let them attach all forms of monitoring devices to her head and to her arms.

To Sabé and Dormé, all she said was, “Don’t leave me.”

“Never,” Dormé said, and Padmé seized her hand just as another long rolling contraction caught at her, vicious undertow, making her cry out. 

“Two heartbeats,” one of the staff said, and there was a commotion in the corner of the room -- 

Rippling pain, over and over again, and then Sabé said, as if from a terrifying distance, “Push, Padmé, _push_ , you need to help them get out -- ”

Down down bearing down. Every exhale a strangled cry --

Another voice, crying out -- the voice of a child -- the smell of blood and birth -- 

“It’s a girl,” one of the staff said.

“Here comes the next one,” another voice called, warningly. “Might be trying to come out on its own -- ”

“Keep pushing,” Dormé said, cool and calm and gentle and Padmé kissed the back of her hand and did as she was told.

“A boy!”

“Good, now the placenta -- ”

The clinical words vanished in the sudden elated roar of her own blood -- she hadn’t thought she could smile again -- but she heard herself coughing out a short, agonized laugh, saw the shocked wonder in the eyes of the women standing either side of her.

A Togrutan male with his arms full of white-wrapped bundles. “Congratulations. Two healthy children. A girl and a boy.”

“Here, let me help you sit up,” Sabé said, and Padmé sighed and pressed her hand in relief, before opening her arms.

Oh, what a weight they were. 

Wispy strands of light-brown hair on the girl’s head, and startling blue eyes in the boy’s face. 

Padmé’s heart seized up with a complicated twist of emotions: for the girl had her eyes and the boy had her mouth, but there was no denying that the lines in their faces had both come directly from Anakin.

“Do you have names for them?” Dormé said, after a moment, unwittingly snapping her out of her agonized reverie.

Names. Yes. She remembered the list. 

Here was her daughter, wide-eyed and dauntless. Here was her son, with his shy toothless smile.

“Leia Amidala,” she whispered, kissing her daughter’s forehead.

“Luke,” she whispered, kissing her son’s cheek.

“I want to speak to General Kenobi,” she said, looking up at the other two.

“But m’lady -- ”

“Your _condition_ , Padmé -- ”

“We are in a medical facility, are we not?” She could hear the old royal tones in her voice, and she drew a strange relief from them. She borrowed the old strength of those bright robes, those elaborate headpieces. “I will submit to treatment as needed, but I don’t have much time -- need I remind you that my life is in danger, and now these children are as well.”

The male Togrutan stepped away; a tall humanoid female took his place. Lines of blue-green gill-like organs running down the column of her throat and into her pristine white robes. “Madam, may I present my congratulations on the birth of your children.”

“Thank you,” Padmé said, as regally as she could through the exhaustion of her extended labor.

“Very healthy children, I might add,” the woman said. “You, on the other hand. I do not need to look at the instruments to see that you are physically and possibly psychologically traumatized. Did I hear you say that your life is in danger? Madam, I do not see what else could be more dangerous at this time. If you do not settle down to rest, if you do not take the time for proper convalescence, your body will start shutting down. I will not allow this.” 

“I am grateful for your thoughts,” Padmé said. “But if you wish me to stay here and rest -- that is a luxury that I fear I cannot afford right now.”

“We can give you protection at this station, such as it is -- ”

“I refuse to place your lives in any more danger than I already have. The enemy we are running from has immense power and immense reach and _he has no remorse_ ,” and oh how those words hurt to say. How those words made her clutch the children more closely. 

A commotion at the door and raised voices, and Dormé reaching for a blaster in her sleeve -- 

“My congratulations on your offspring you will accept,” Master Yoda said, and she could barely hear the sadness in how hard his voice was. “But afraid am I that we must separate them. For their own safety. For yours.”

Instead of answering him directly she turned to the woman at her side. “Sabé. I would request your help.”

“I await your orders, Padmé.”

“Have the medical staff ready a ship. Smaller is better. It must have a working hyperdrive.”

“It will be done.” 

And Padmé turned back to the three standing at the foot of her bed: the Senator who was her friend; the beaten-down General; the spry old Master. “I will hear no talk of separating my children, either from each other or from me. I am their mother. These children are _mine_ and they will stay with me. I will run, and I will hide. But no one is taking my children away.”

“Your safety, Padmé -- ” Bail Organa said.

“The children’s lives -- ” Kenobi said.

She met their eyes. She stared them down. Their words faltered and trailed off and did not return.

“And if find you he does? If of the children he knows?”

Padmé held her children close, and met Yoda’s eyes. “This galaxy is not big enough for both me and Anakin,” she admitted, hard and not at all begrudging. It was only the truth. Perhaps she had to learn how to stop calling _him_ by his name. “And if I meet him again I will not survive a second time. So I will do what needs to be done. Dormé,” she added.

“M’lady,” was the immediate answer.

“What was the last question you were asked, when they put you through the trials to join the ranks of the Handmaidens?”

A hard bright light in her friend’s eyes, and the rapid movement of her hand, the hand holding a small blaster. 

Padmé stared defiantly at the muzzle of the blaster as it came to rest not inches away from her own face.

As the muzzle moved down to point at Leia’s heart, and at Luke’s.

Another muzzle, and Padmé nodded: Sabé’s blaster was larger than Dormé’s, and just as steady. “Are you willing to _kill_ your charge in order to protect her?”

“Are you willing to _kill_ her if she orders you to?” She could see unshed tears in Dormé’s eyes. “You only need say the word, Padmé.”

“Thank you, my friends,” Padmé said. And to Yoda, she added, “Does this suffice?”

“For now,” was the weary response.

“I will see to your ship.”

Padmé blinked. “General. We would surely be more than grateful for your help, but -- ”

“But nothing. I have nowhere to go and I will not go into silent exile if there is still something I can do. Namely: protecting you, and your companions, and your children. I’ve done it before, and I would be happy to do it again.” 

“We would certainly be grateful for any help you could give us.”

“Good luck coming up with a cover story, though,” Sabé muttered.

“I’m -- I’m sure we’ll be able to manage that,” and some of the old calculated recklessness seemed to return to Kenobi’s shoulders, to the lines in his face. “None of us are exactly _new_ to this kind of life, in any case. Running and hiding. It can be done. We just need to find a good place to start.”

A quiet oath.

Padmé blinked at Bail Organa. 

“Breha knew this would happen. So it’s her plan we’re putting into motion, now, and not mine: I admit I wanted to hide you somewhere near Alderaan. That is now no longer prudent nor possible. We’re not doing that,” and the Senator ran his hands through his hair, leaving strands sticking up in his agitation. “Running funds, supplies, a sturdy unremarkable ship. And a one-way flight path.”

“Where to?” Padmé asked.

“The Rishi Maze.”

She blinked again, this time at Kenobi’s sigh. “I’d hoped to never go back to that place. But it makes sense. We’ll just have to stay far, far away from Kamino.”

“Ideal it is not. But a start,” Yoda said, shaking his head. “To my intended destination I will still go. But lay more traps for the fallen one, for the Emperor, that will be helpful. Set out soon I must.”

“Thank you,” Padmé murmured.

“All hope we have left, we place in you and your children.”

She watched the aged Master stump out of the room, small only in stature.

“I’ve never left the galaxy before,” Dormé said, quietly.

“Courage, Dormé,” Sabé said. “Or are you more daunted by the Intergalactic Void than by the thought of changing two squalling infants?”

Padmé laughed, and murmured, “Thank you.”

“Let’s get to it,” she heard Kenobi say.

And now she could close her eyes for a moment. Now she could hold her children close. There was no such thing as absolute safety -- but maybe this way they’d have a little time.

“I’m here,” she promised wide-eyed Leia and rosy-cheeked Luke. “Mother’s here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Of course there's more to it than just this. The story will continue.
> 
> \-----
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
